Building Community

Let’s talk about bees

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Our bee problem is quite the topic of conversation these days–at social gatherings, in meetings, over coffee. I could say and have—for example at Christmas dinner when apologizing for my not-quite-stellar pumpkin bread—that last summer the CSA grower from whom I get my produce planted five hundred pumpkin plants and only got three pumpkins (so I had to buy canned, rather than processing my own). No pollination, he thought. And just the other day an acquaintance mentioned that friends who live in a tony suburb north of Chicago had, also last summer, had their own pollination troubles in their vegetable garden. Why? she wondered.

Commentary: On not jumping the gun

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I’m sure we all have our own pet scenarios, and many experts have excellent and credible reasons for believing one of those is more likely than others. I would argue that as a movement, however, peak-oil activists do better to focus on the common outcomes of high, low or fluctuating oil prices, than to try to predict which path energy prices will take. The end-results matter most.

Freaked out by fracking – Jan 17

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-Shale gas: a provisional assessment of climate change and environmental impacts (report)
-Shale gas moratorium in UK urged by Tyndall Centre
-Warning over UK shale gas projects
-Opponents to Fracking Disclosure Take Big Money From Industry (NEW)

Doing something about it – Jan 16

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– Storytelling as Organizing
– Words Matter: How Media Can Build Civility or Destroy It
– Healthy Village Model Improves Community Health and Builds Local Green Economy
– It’s Time to Return to a Robust Urbanism
– Why does health care in Cuba cost 96% less than in the US?

Peak Moment 187: Filmmaker Jon Cooksey (“How to Boil a Frog”)

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Filmmaker Jon Cooksey is one funny guy, even while presenting the most serious problems facing humanity. In this fast-paced conversation, he gallops all over the map with five big problems, five big solutions, and a playful and heartfelt approach. Wacky, sobering, full of animations, with Jon in dozens of personas, “How to Boil a Frog” is a film to view and discuss with friends.

Structures

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When my partners and I embarked on this project, nearly three years ago, I could barely distinguish between a screwdriver and a zucchini. Now I’ve hammered, drilled, sawed, plumbed, tiled, and constructed. And grown, in ways I could not have imagined. Kurt Vonnegut’s mythical writer, Kilgore Trout, comes to mind: “How the hell did I do that?”

Show me the evidence: Growth and prosperity

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Most cities in the U.S. have operated on the assumption that growth is inherently beneficial and that more and faster growth will benefit local residents economically. Local growth is often cited as the cure for urban ailments, especially the need for local jobs. But where is the empirical evidence that growth is providing these benefits?

Food crisis, reports, and solutions? – Jan 14

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-World hunger best cured by small-scale agriculture: report
-The futility of trying to fight these food and energy price shocks
-Transylvania: could this ‘lost in time’ land be the future of European agriculture?
-Can We Feed 9 Billion People?
-EU organic food push hailed by African farmers
-Best practices for organic gardeners
-The Great Food Crisis of 2011